Buying Laptop: will HardDrive shortage up prices soon?

Was going to buy a laptop for dad's birthday in the new year, should I be thinking about getting it sooner with the price of hard drives going up? I don't know what kind of stock Currys/PC World/etc carry and how soon it will affect prices, TIA.

Your too late.
Many firms are restricting sale of bare hard drive to 1 per person and some sizes are out of stock, the manufacturers are using any stock to supply system manufactures. Prices of drives have gone up by 30% (if you can get the one you want). This is bound to affect system prices although with all the 'special' offers about it is hard to do a comparison.

This seems to be another one of those confusing stories. I was reading in a computer magazine the other week, when a company spokesperson whose company supplies many computer manufacturers's with components like hard-drives etc, that the 'crisis' as been self imposed, because while there is a reduction in manufacturing from some plants, its not as bad as first thought?.

Some plants had to shut down completely - one Western Digital plant was under 10 feet of water, but other plants could take up some, but not all, of the slack. Overall product is down by the 70m figure I quoted above.

Undoubtedly though, it seems that much of the increase in price was down to panic buying, and some evil people buying up huge numbers of drives just to put them back on the market at even higher prices.